Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate the first phase of the international airport at Mopa in Goa on Sunday.
The Mopa airport will be Goa's second airport besides the one at Dabolim. It is being built at a cost of Rs 2,870 crore.
Besides the Mopa international airport, Modi will also participate in other functions, which include giving the address the valedictory function of the World Ayurveda Congress. Modi will also virtually inaugurate a host of other projects, including the All India Institute of Ayurveda in North Goa's Dhargal, the National Institute of Unani medicine in Ghaziabad (Uttar Pradesh), and the National Institute of Homeopathy in Delhi’s Narela.
The Goa Chief Minister's Office (CMO) said Modi will address the World Ayurveda Congress event at 2 pm.
Besides Goa, Modi on Sunday will also visit Maharashtra's Nagpur where he will inaugurate the first phase of 'Samruddhi Mahamarg', connecting Nagpur and Shirdi, and flag off the Vande Bharat Express, as per officials. He will also launch the Phase-I of the Nagpur Metro and lay the foundation stone of its second phase, and dedicate to the nation an All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in Nagpur.
In Nagpur, Modi will also lay the foundation stone of the National Institute of One Health (NIO) and the Nag river pollution abatement project, besides inaugurating the Central Institute of Petrochemicals Engineering and Technology (CIPET) and the Centre for Research, Management and Control of Hemoglobinopathies, said the Prime Minister's Office (PMO).
All about Goa's Moga international airport
At 4 pm on Sunday, Modi will commission the first phase of the Mopa intenational airport, where Goa Governor PS Sreedharan Pillai, Union Minister for Civil Aviation and Steel Jyotiraditya Scindia, Union Minister of state for Ports, Shipping and waterways Shripad Naik, Goa Chief Minister Pramod Sawant will be present.
The Mopa airport will have the capacity to handle 44 lakh passengers per year in the first phase and it will go up to 1 crore passengers per year after the completion of the entire project, the officials said.
The existing Dabolim Airport has the capacity to handle 85 lakh passengers in a year, but it does not have the facility for cargo transportation, which is there at the new airport.
The airport is being seen as a logistics hub. It has the potential of serving as a key logistics hub, directly connecting many domestic and international destinations, an official told Hindustan Times.
The HT report also listed other features of the Mopa airport:
- A solar power plant
- Green buildings
- LED lights on the runway
- Rainwater harvesting
- State-of-the-art sewage treatment plant with recycling facilities
- 3-D monolithic precast buildings
- Robomatic hollow precast walls
- 5G compatible IT infrastructure
- 14 parking bays along with a night parking facility for aircraft
- Self-baggage drop facilities
- State of the art and independent air navigation infrastructure
(With PTI inputs)
